Evil iPhone scammers prey on the poor and sick

A scam involving Apple has been entrapping poor and sick people into expensive contacts under the promise of sharing in the iPhone’s success has been uncovered by a US television station. According to 9news the scam involves blokes cruising around homeless shelters and blood banks in an effort to find people desperate for money.

People are convinced to sign up for numerous iPhone contracts and then handover the reduced-price phones for some cash. Those who sign the contracts are then left on the hook with expensive monthly payments. Apple is involved because the victims are driven to Apple stores convinced them to sign numerous contracts for numerous iPhones. Victims will then be paid $100 or more in exchange for several iPhones. The iPhones are unlocked and sold on the international market for more than $700 dollars each. The victims are told that they can cancel the contracts and don’t have to pay anything. The problem is that is not true and they will be chased for cash by Apple. One person owes Apple more than $6,000.

Jobs’ Mob store owners must know what is going on, but hell, a sale is a sale and one more signature is just another paid up member of the Apple cult. The scam is nasty because many of the victims are not really thinking about long term problems, more about where their next meal is coming from and are soft targets. The TV cameras filmed an Apple store employee collecting information for several contracts and then giving the new iPhones directly to the scammers and more or less ignoring “the customer.”

One of the men behind one scheme as Benji Kermani of Beverly Hills. Kermani owns a mobile phone company called DEAL2BEAT which flogs "unlocked" iPhones in foreign countries. Of course, Apple was asked about its involvement in the scam. After not saying anything for a bit, Apple said that it did not comment on "matters of security" or not saying anything at all. It appears to have a get out of jail free card. When the 9news investigated the Cherry Creek Apple store, it found a police report indicating that Denver police will not investigate because they consider the scheme a "civil" issue and "unfounded."

Apple’s partner Sprint said that it was aggressively trying to curb credit muling by hiring private investigators across the country to track down mobile phone traffickers. However it was the only one of Apple’s partners who said anything about the scam.